Carers allowance breaches modern slavery laws surely

[Vatsallfolks]

This country has a minimum wage . It’s a fact . If you are over 21 years old it is £12.21 ph.

Therefore can somebody please explain why Carers Allowance is £83. 30 per week whilst stipulating that carers should be looking after their caree a minimum of 35 hours a week and then some .. which equates to £2.38 per hour .. and then .. we are ‘allowed’ to work another 18 hours.. (if we only could but we can’t as our cared for person actually doesn’t have a 36 hour cut off !!) just to equate to a minimum wage for 54 hour week ??
(when in fact many of us do a 189 hour week ? (24/7) which in reality is £2207 per week ..

so in essence e what I am saying is this . I could say NO .. I’m not doing it anymore.. and it will cost the govt a minimum of the minimum wage for him to be looked after .. but if don’t .. because I love him.. I had to give up my job to care for him .. which I have again because I love him .. but my God .. aren’t the Government taking the piss ?

You're chatting shit, as a family you can't have both parents working full time with a disabled child, so I had to give up a career as a Curriculum Manager in Further Education (22+ years) So we are a one salary family and I receive carers allowance which is a meagre amount which doesn't even cover the petrol to take my son 44 miles a day to his special needs school on another county.

I have absolutely no idea if the order is wrong. Whoever put together this chart clearly has no idea either. The DWP actually estimated for the last financial year that £9.5billion was overpaid due to fraud or error. This is hugely different than what the chart suggests. This doesn't account for the fact that the DWP themselves have literally no idea about the level of fraud pertaining to disability benefits for example. The purported rate is comically low and doesn't even begin to account for people over exaggerating their conditions or reporting their worst days. Nobody has an accurate figure for this as it would take a crazy level of surveillance to even start to get an idea.

Unpaid benefits again is impossible to calculate. How could you ever accurately work out who is eligible for what in the first place if they haven't claimed? It might be relatively easy for some benefits but others would be really difficult to prove unless someone went through the assessment process (PIP etc ). Lots of people don't claim benefits because they feel they don't need them. My MIL does this with WFA. She may well be in the reported figure but she genuinely doesn't need the benefit so is artificially the numbers in some ways.

Tax evasion has been lumped in with tax avoidance. This is wrong and unhelpful! They should be separated out like all other categories have been. Evasion is equivalent to benefit fraud whereas avoidance is equivalent to benefit maximisation. I would like these bubbles drawn and compared alongside each other. For example HMRC have estimated that tax evasion costs £5.5 billion so significantly less than benefit fraud and overpayment. Following your logic the elephant would actually be benefit fraud and overpayment over tax evasion.

You sound like a government official. For most, there is no choice involved. Every single person on CA I know, had to give to work as there was no provision from social care/health and/or education to fill that gap.

You cannot claim that 'care is care' - as if there's an equivalence, and then also claim that 'No two people have exactly the same needs' as if there's a difference. Literally, what you seem to be saying is 'everyone needs care'. Yes, that's true. But we're specifically talking about Carers Allowance for disabled people here.

Having a baby is a choice, you can choose not to, that's why abortion exists.

Elderly care happens within a specific timeframe, i.e. the person has to be elderly. There's a difference between caring for someone for 10 years and caring for someone for 60 years.

I don't care about your direct first hand experience, it's just an anecdote, it's evidence of nothing. I care about data and facts.

I'm shocked that you don't seem to understand there's a link between having a government that gives its mates backhanders, that same government allowing corporate tax evasion on a massive scale, and newspapers friendly to the government and corporations peddling stories about scarcity. It's not about 'infinite' resources, it's about using the finite resources we have morally and responsibly.

Finally, I could be wrong, but I think I see where you're coming from with regard to the 'enormous care bill' because you're right. Give it 10 or 20 years and, I believe, we're going to see the biggest shift of wealth from the private individual to the corporate sector ever. All that property wealth that people think they've got, that they imagine is going to be inherited, nah, I it's going to end up paying astronomical care bills. To avoid this, we need an argument that suggests it's right and proper to care for the elderly, badly and informally, to stop them having to go into homes for professional help. It's an effort to normalise casual brutality to preserve the inheritance.

Elderly care happens within a specific timeframe, i.e. the person has to be elderly.

That's not a given. A lot of chronic, progressive conditions effectively prematurely make a person "old" for the needs of care.

Problems, with continence, mobility, mental acuity, fatigue ....

If you want to know how society will treat you aged 80, look at how it treats someone aged 20 with a chronic wasting illness.

I know several people that have given up their careers to look after their elderly parents.
These people are in their 50s, 60s.
Parents in their 80s, 90s

No job
No paying into a private pension
No freedom
Lack of social interaction

Carers allowance of £83 a week

Living on their savings or in poverty

The reality is brutal

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2ev88nzxpo.amp

Sorry, does it say her df is able to work 3 days a week?

If people want to move in with parents and call themselves their carer that is up to them but if he can work then he isn't needing round the clock care is he? Of course she cares for her daughter with diabetes that is what parents do.

Families should look after each other and if they aren't able then carers either privately paid or funded can be arranged. This is such a non story imo. What does she want, paying to care for her dad who goes out to work?!

Maybe the reason her DF is able to work 3 days a week in what he describes as a professional career, is because of the care provided by his daughter.

I understand what you're getting at and obviously they have a set up that suits them and precludes "financial embarrasment", however the point is that adult children who "choose" to provide care that the state does not or cannot are often financially disadvantaged by lack of autonomy and inability to consistently build their own careers.

Such choices are often not choices, and often, but not always fall to women. I really dislike the undertone that carers are mugs or martyrs, it pisses me right off, to be frank.

'Maybe the reason her DF is able to work 3 days a week in what he describes as a professional career, is because of the care provided by his daughter.'

Oh come on, as he works he does not need his dd giving up work to 'care' for him. Stories like this do a real disservce for genuine carers. She says she provides care for her daughter with a medical condition, well yes who else should look after her dc? It sounds like she is her df's housekeeper rather than a carer as the poor man didn't even know how to work the washer.